Scenes of Sympathy : Identity and Representation in Victorian Fiction / / Audrey Jaffe.

• Author: Jaffe, Audrey.
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca : : Cornell University Press,, 2000.; ©2000.
• Year of Publication: 2018; 2000
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (184 pages)
• Notes: Includes index.

In Scenes of Sympathy, Audrey Jaffe argues that representations of sympathy in Victorian fiction both reveal and unsettle Victorian ideologies of identity. Situating these representations within the context of Victorian visual culture, and offering new readings of key works by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ellen Wood, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle, Jaffe shows how mid-Victorian spectacles of social difference construct the middle-class self, and how late-Victorian narratives of feeling pave the way for the sympathetic affinities of contemporary identity politics. Perceptive and elegantly written, Scenes of Sympathy is the first detailed examination of the place of sympathy in Victorian fiction and ideology. It will redirect the current critical conversation about sympathy and refocus discussions of late-Victorian fictions of identity.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. Sympathy and the Spi of Capitalism -- 1. Sympathy and Spectacle in Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" -- 2. Detecting the Beggar: Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Mayhew, and the Construction of Social Identity -- Part II. Fear of Falling -- 3. Under Cover: Sympathy and Ressentiment in GaskelVs R uth -- 4. Isabel's Spectacles: Seeing Value in East Lynne -- Part III. The Aesthetics of Cultural Identity -- 5. Consenting to the Fact: Body; Nation, and Identity in Daniel Deronda -- 5. Embodying Culture: Dorian's Wish -- Index